Our Petaluma mission has for several years been apparently barren. Its first years were by far its best ones. It would have been abandoned but for the faith and self-denying persistency of its excellent teacher, Mrs. M. H. Colby. Throwing off 50 per cent. of the meagre salary promised her when she entered upon the work; soliciting aid from friends in Petaluma; interesting, as far as possible, her pupils to contribute, she has made her mission the least expensive of them all; and she has hoped against hope that the promise would sooner or later be fulfilled, and her labor be not in vain in the Lord. Others grew discouraged. Chinese helpers sent to work with her came back to urge that the work be suspended. The hearts were too hard. The families or _clans_ represented in the Chinese population of Petaluma were too hostile one to another. There was too much gambling; there was too much opium. Even those who had attended the school for years, seemed no less averse to Christianity than those who had never entered the schoolroom door. About three months ago the teacher was able to write me that she believed the ice was broken, and that three of her pupils were really asking after the true God and salvation. I had learned, however, by hard experience that the “heathen Chinee”—among other “tricks that are vain”—can play pious on occasions, and do it so well as to deceive the very elect. More than once have I been compelled, by the adverse reports of trustworthy Christian Chinese, to decline to baptise, or in any way to encourage in Christian profession, those whom American Sunday-school teachers had come to regard almost as model saints; and I feared that Mrs. Colby’s warm heart might have started hopes which a careful scrutiny would prove unfounded.